


Local Space Case Wanders into the Desert and Finds the Truth

by blueberrywithtrexarms



Category: Danger Days: The true lives of the fabulous killjoys- My Chemical Romance (album)
Genre: Completed, Happy Ending, Neopronouns, Nonbinary Party Poison, Nonbinary Show Pony, Other, background OCs - Freeform, depression (kinda sorta), imaginary recreational drugs, tw for vomit, unreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2020-10-27 02:09:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20752583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueberrywithtrexarms/pseuds/blueberrywithtrexarms
Summary: Jet star does jack shit but look at the stars and go galaxy brain.





	1. Look to the north. Keep Looking.

Jet star has never been completely satisfied. He’s always felt sort of stifled by the confines of an area, be it the walls of Battery City or the radiation belt at the edge of the zones. He wants to keep moving, keep exploring.

Of course, it's hard for anyone to feel stifled under the wide open sky of the zones, especially after living life under that city sky. There was real air up there, probably. But the smog was so thick and the light pollution so bad that you rarely see the sun in the day and never saw the stars at night. It glowed a dirty gray orange when you went to bed and stayed that way till morning.

Beyond the walls of the city -and the haze that hung in the slight valley around it- was so much sky you could hardly stand it. It stretched miles and miles over what were once neighborhoods, pounded to rubble by the bombs years ago, looted for anything edible or valuable more recently, and now the broken walls of what once were houses reached up toward that sky. Pointing toward emptiness. Or a chaos more organized and peaceful than the one they had seen.  
The sky stretched further beyond destroyed houses and industrial sites and into the natural emptiness of the desert. Scrub brush dotted the dusty soil before giving way to rolling hills of sand. There were probably as many grains of sand as there were stars in the galaxy, Jet thought. He could just see the sand better.

There were probably as many visible stars in that sky as there were grains of sand in Jet’s boots. It had been bothering him earlier, but he had been laying still for so long staring up at the stars he couldn’t really feel his body anymore. 

Until Party Poison patted Jet’s chest and asked “Can we go in yet? It's gettin kinda chilly.”

Jet grunted. He had been trying to remember up some constellations but got distracted and spaced out. He had practically become one with the sand and started to space out again when Party patted him again, this time singing to the tune of an old David Bowie song.

There’s a star man staring at the sky. His boyfriend’s getting chilly, but he will not go inside, there’s a staaaaar maaaan wmffbfbluf  
The rest of the song was muffled as Party sang into Jet’s shoulder, giggling over their own cleverness.

Jet continued to stare numbly up at the night until the stars went double as his eyes drifted out of focus. He wanted... something. What was it. Adventure? Not really. Adventure wasn't very peaceful, and peace was definitely a big part of what he wanted, but not really it. He wanted to see something new. But what?

Suddenly, he did see something new. Party's face had eclipsed the stars, stringy red hair hanging down and brushing his cheeks. But it wasn't really new. It was the same greasy person he saw every day, with dark circles under their eyes and stains from where dirt and sweat mixed to make mud on their face. He wanted something better for this favorite person and the rest of his crew. He wanted someplace where they always had enough to eat and enough water to drink or even bathe regularly. Battery City was definitely not an option for that, because the price for comfort was freedom, and though it was plenty easy to pay the water bill and go to the grocery store and go to sleep in you Better Living MaxiPedic bed-- well, no it wasn’t. For a place that desperately wanted your money they were pretty bad at paying you money to spend on things. The place sucked the life out of you, and you weren't even living your own life. Going to work, spending money, going to sleep. Survival and refusal to participate in the machine were rewarding in their own right, but Jet just wanted something.... What. What was it he wanted? He could definitely stand some more plants. And some rain. Oh, god, he wanted rain. And a place to swim. He hadn't swum in years!

This thought brought a dull ache to the back of his throat, and it was swiftly accompanied by some sort of disgust at himself for being sad over things being too dry. It was the fucking desert. What did he expect?

"There's like... a whole world inside your eyes, man." Party said, gazing intently at him. Jet brought himself back into his body and his eyes back into focus as Party moved to straddle him.

He wished there was a world behind his eyes, wished there was anything going on inside his brain but fog and that vague inexplicable desire. Where could he go with water where he wouldn't have to cough up his life savings? This sucked. Everything sucked. Fuck all of this, jeez.

"You're suuuuper quiet tonight, starman." Poison broke the silence again. They reached down to push some long curly hair out of jet's blank face. They leaned in close again to look him. Their noses touched and light sparked dimly back into Jet's eyes. He smiled at the sight of poison hovering over him, but he still wasn't quite with it. "Your mouth might as well be doing something useful," Party murmured, breath hot on Jet's lips.  
Jet smiled a little wider and nearly forgot his malaise. As they planted a kiss right on his lips. And again. And again. He made a halfhearted effort to bring his arms up to their waist, but they still felt heavy and dead, so he lay back and let party do what they wanted. And they wanted. All he had to do was part his lips and Party's tongue was in his mouth, warm and slimy and somehow comforting, and their fingers were in his hair, pressing into his scalp and pushing his head gently up into the kiss.

There was nothing to think about, not the stars, not distance, not unsettling loneliness, just the contrast of Poison's heat and the night's cold, just the sensation of their hips digging down into his stomach and their thighs hugging the sides of his ribs, their breath and their tongue and their nose pushed up against his cheekbone, sharp little teeth on his lip.  
This didn't suck.

-

The sun was low in the east, barely peeping up over the distant blue hills. Jet star stood on the roof of the diner, his long exaggerated shadow flung off to his left. He gazed straight ahead, trying to think about something. Battery City, he knew, was almost directly to the west. The light pollution from it obscured his stars at night. Though he could never see the city itself because it was hidden just beyond the curve of the earth. Fifteen miles of emptiness stretched before him, route Guano winding into the distance. Well, the desert wasn't totally empty. There were scraggly juniper bushes, prickly pear, and yucca all growing happily in the dry heat. There was his family, still sleeping beneath him, there was Dr.D's radio station off to the west, and Tommy's shop just a few miles from that. The Nest. The Hyper Thrust off to the east. Other things.

But these were all places he frequented often and cared very little about. He wanted something more to explore. He was almost certain there was more to this world than the city and the desert. Something beyond the radiation belt. But what? More desert? More destruction? He had heard of the great fires of 2012 when he was in middle school in the city. Bat City officials had said there was no chance of the fire spreading to them, but the price of water skyrocketed and high schools were bled dry of students, recruited to be firefighters. He'd heard whispers he shouldn't have that the firefighters just kidnapped people from outlying towns and brought them in for menial labor under the guise of rescue missions.

From then on, he grew more and more horrified at what BL/ind was capable of. Watching Fact News with his parents at night, he stared at updates from the helium wars. The entire state of Texas had been blown to smithereens, and it was presented as a great victory for Battery City and what was left of "the civilized world". But his parents did not look on with pride or vengeance. They stared at the TV with disgust, but didn't dare say anything.

He'd escaped the city at 15, during the height of the analog wars. His parents saw it coming. His father cried and begged him not to go, made a point of dumping the whole family's mandatory meds down the sink to show him he didn't like what BL/ind stood for either. His mother covered up the always-on Fact News with a towel, until they got a letter in the mail about how having the built in camera above the screen covered up (and by extension, not viewing Fact News) was against regulation.

Jet's mother didn't try to stop him. He could see it in her eyes she had half a mind to go with him. They had discussed it at length. She had her reasons. But finally, the night before he left, she held his face in her hands.  
"I know I can't stop you. So when you go, go far. You understand me? Far."

And he did.  
Far from the city, far from prying eyes and security cameras and bugs, far from the Fact News displaying bloody scenes from the battle of Utah, far from the shock wave of the pig bomb that left a crater so big a neighborhood could fit inside of it.

He was way out here. Waaaaay out in zone 4, far from anybody and anything, in this dingy abandoned diner with its grease stains on the walls. He heard tell Better Living was building a new road out into zone 1, looking to expand, put up a few housing developments. He was worried he couldn't go far enough, that one day he'd be backed up against the radiation belt of zone 6 with BL/ind breathing down his neck, and he would have nowhere else to go.

There had to be somewhere else. There had to be more people than the killjoys and the neutrals and a few waveheads living in the shadow of Battery City. Was there anyone else out there? Did anyone survive the wars and the fires? His current events class in the city certainly hadn't make it seem like that was the case, but it's not like that could be trusted at all, being that Better Living liked to paint itself as the world's greatest economic superpower with the highest standard of living run by happy, hardworking citizens. Well, they were for the most part happy, when their medication of the month subscription box came in the mail, with the latest formula for double strength Contentment (tm). But no one ever learned about what was going on elsewhere except for Better Living's conquests and the dangers of nuclear fallout that the city protected everyone from. It led everyone to not really consider if there even was an elsewhere.

He was brought sharply back to the present by finding himself on the ground.  
"Told you not to lock your knees, dumbass!" Said a voice behind him. Jet tilted his head back to see Ghoul, striding towards him upside down across the roof.

He sat up. His butt hurt like mad. "Pffft no you didn't. When. When did you tell me?"

"Real long time ago. I came up here to see if you wanted breakfast and you were just standing there, staring a million miles away, and I was like "don't lock your knees, jet" but you didn't hear me. So I was gonna kick you in the back of the knees but I think you woulda fallen off the edge."

Jet looked at how close his feet were to the edge, barely a foot away from the gutter. "Dude I would have murdered you."

"Not if I murdered you first!" He stood up from where he'd been squatting next to Jet. "Anyway. Breakfast?"

Jet nodded and hauled himself up, shuffling across the roof to the service ladder that led down into the janitor's closet.


	2. way out west there's a giant swimming pool

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kobra makes weird and possibly magical art, jet's still kinda out of wack. Idk why I feel the need to tell you that's what this entire fic is. A junkie has visions of the outside world... maybe.

He lay sprawled on the cold linoleum of the diner floor. It was so damn hot out. Why did they live someplace hot, huh? What fucker decided that was a good idea.  
Too close to the equator, huh? Well he would just move away from the equator and away from the fucking sun. He'd walk right into the ocean, whatever that was, and become a fish. Better always wet and cold than always warm and dry.  
Always the same places. The diner, Dr.D's, Tommy Chow Mein's, and maybe the city if they were feeling like risking death.  
Always that same fucking sun and this same fucking sand and those coyotes howling at night. Where did they even go? Like where did they live? Those little fuckers could walk wherever they damn well pleased and eat livestock while they were at it.

He rolled over on his back, trying to squash down the tightness in his chest and the fog that was starting to roll in over his mind.

His brain itched.

He lay there for a few more minutes, and then went to find someone to talk to. Or sit next to. Whatever.  
Kobra was in what used to be the kitchen, crouched over a salvaged broken sheet of drywall, using it as a canvas.

"Where's Party and Ghoul?"

Kobra didn't look up from what he was painting. "Went to the Trash Heaps. Think Poison wanted a skirt. Ghoul went to make sure they don't die.”

Jet looked down at the enormous painting. It was loud and brash and whatever the subject was (he couldn't quite tell) looked to be in pain. He didn't know how he knew that.

"What are you painting?" He asked.

Kobra grunted in response. He never talked about his art. Jet knew that, and wasn't sure why he even asked.

Kobra's art was an enigma. He painted huge, abstract, chaotic scenes on whatever he could find, never made a sound while doing it. The pieces would sit up against the wall in the diner. People would come in and look, then walk out again without buying one. Maybe one in ten lookers bought a painting. 

But that ten percent were strange. They walked in, glanced at each one in passing, and then went directly to the painting that spoke to them. Stood staring for a solid five minutes. Jet would sometimes walk a little closer to see the looks on their faces. Recognition, surprise, confusion, and always a little unsettled. He wondered what they saw. The people who stared always bought. There was no deliberation, not a second glance was saved for the others. They stared at one then turned to kobra, dazed, and asked, "how much?"

The people who didn't stare never bought. They looked at each, nodded approvingly, and tried to ask kobra what a particular one meant. Kobra would frown and shrug, and Ghoul would say from his booth "If you know, you know, man, if you don't, you don't."

By now Kobra was staring at Jet from his place on the floor.

"I can't work with other people in here, man. Nothin against you."

"Yep." Jet sighed and stood up to leave.

He climbed up on to the roof and watched the sun set. He wondered how far away the ocean was. And how big the ocean was. Just beyond the radiation belt? Was the radiation belt even real?  
He lay down and zoned out. Aaallll the way out. He was still awake, technically, but didn't bother moving when he heard the trans am pull up and doors shut.

Some ten minutes later he heard footsteps clanging on the ladder behind him. "Jet? Oh, there you are. Look what I found at the trash heaps today!"

He heard them, yes, and in his mind he said "Oh great, lemme see!" But he was still turned on his side facing the wall, and never actually said anything out loud.

The footsteps stopped by his back. "Jet," Poison said, quieter this time. "Are you nappin 'r are you chillin 'r are you dead?"   
They nudged his shoulder with their boot.

He spent a long time trying to make words come out of his mouth. "All three."

Poison got down on their knees and rolled him over onto his back. Now he could see they were wearing a new yellow shirt with a pink pocket and hems.

"You've been doing this a lot lately, have you been feeling ok?"

He just looked up at them.

"Is that a no?"

He shrugged one shoulder a quarter of an inch.

Poison tilted their head, brows furrowed. They reached down and touched Jet's cheek. "Baby, you're pretty warm. Why don't you come inside, or take your jacket off at least?"

"S'not so bad." He slurred sleepily.

Poison's frown deepened. "It was a hundred six degrees today, gotta still be in the 90’s now; it really is so bad." They unzipped his jacket and pulled it as far open as it would go without Jet having to take his arms out of the sleeves. "Kobra gets reeealy sleepy and out of it when he gets too hot, maybe you're like him that way."

Poison sat with Jet on the roof until it was completely dark out. At first it was too hot to touch so they just sat cross legged near him, later grabbing his hand when they saw the first star come out.  
Now it was much cooler. They looked down at Jet's face, which was much less flushed. "You feeling better yet?"

Jet took in a big breath. "Yeah, I think so. I'm super hungry, though."

Poison grinned. "Well I've got just the thing for you!"

It had been an excellent day for scrounging at the trash heaps. Extremely easy pickings. The grocery stores in the city were purging all the out-of-date inventory that hadn't sold. Once the trucks had gone killjoys swarmed the piles searching for cans and other stuff that was well preserved.

Ghoul had grabbed all the cans he could fit in his dufflebag, and now it was dumped out all over the floor and everyone was sitting around it, sorting the good stuff- what had to be eaten right now and what should be saved for later.

There were canned green beans, diced green chiles, a jar of that nasty nacho cheese sauce, can after can of black, pinto, and red kidney beans, some corn pea and carrot mix, and clam chowder. All this was fine, but the thing that got everybody the most excited were the drinks- a 6 pack of soda, a few cans of frozen juice concentrate, condensed milk, and 24 pack of water bottles. Pshhh, as if water expired.

They ate like kings that night, if kings were squatters surviving off of scavenged food. Jet looked around at his family giggling and joking like they weren't fighting for their lives, gobbling up vegetables like they were candy.  
Practically anything was candy after a few days of Power Pup.  
He didn’t need anything else did he? Everything he loved was right here.

\---

Things had been going well for a few weeks. The crew ate healthily and cleansed their palettes of Power Pup. Jet had been a little more with it and functional.

Right now they were on a mission for Dr. Death, who wanted to information from some smugglers. Names were not given, even Killjoy names. Only descriptions. They were supposed to be found at Molly Moon’s in Zone 3. Each member of the crew memorized the list and split up through the bar to find the guy. Jet wormed his way through the throngs of dancing, drinking people and past tall tables of folks eating whatever greasy lump the little kitchen could fry up this week. He thought he saw someone standing against the speaker who fit the description. Green dreads, dark skin, but what about the tongue piercing? Dang, he couldn't just go up to a stranger like "stick out your tongue, please and thanks."

He brushed by the stranger to sit on the trash can, and cracked open his soda to give his hands something to do. He made sure he was within the green hair guy's eyesight and yawned.  
He waited a few seconds.  
The guy yawned.  
Jet stole a sideways glance at his tongue. No piercing.  
Damn it.

Thinking about making other people yawn made him yawn some more. He got up from the trash can and ambled on aimlessly until he reached the back of the bar. It was a pretty secluded corner, had a rug and a few beat up couches with people sprawled over them. A girl with her feet up the wall and head hanging over the seat half raised her head to see the new person walking by. He was pretty much done with this job, yeah? He could go over and chill on the couch if he wanted to.

So he flopped down and propped his feet up on the coffee table, leaning his head back against the couch and closing his eyes. The bar hummed around him. So many voices and loud music melting into one blob of noise.

"Wanna try?" 

He opened his eyes to find the joy looking at him. 

"Huh?"

"Got some lizard piss, freshly made. Shark Tank over there says he met the Witch."  
The upside down ‘joy was holding up two pills in her thumb and forefinger. He looked over at who he assumed was shark tank, who was languidly draped over an armchair, with his legs hanging off one end and head hanging off the other. His fingers twitched every now and then and he stared serenely at the graffitied wall above the couch.

"First time's always free, but there's a discount if you can give me any art you make on it. I use it for advertising. With credit, of course."

Jet looked around for the rest of his crew. He saw a flash of bleach blond hair somewhere in the crowd, and some firetruck red a little lower.

"Maybe later." he said.

"Suit yourself." Said the girl, and popped one in her mouth. She let her head dangle from the seat for a bit, and then said "You know man, I've seen so much more than the Witch. Waaaaaaaaaay out west, past everything, there's this enormous puddle. It's so big you can walk into it. Like. Huge. Like the pools back in the city. Only it smells like salt instead of chlorine. Its soooo big, you can't even see the other side. I swam in it once. I think. It was enormous and cold and it held me like a baby, and there was no difference between the sky and the water. And then it sucked me down and pulled me in and I couldn't breathe, like those dreams where you can't breathe and you wake up gasping? Like those. Only it just kept going on and I couldn't wake up until I came down. Oh shit. That is terrible for business. I fucked that up. Damn it."  
She seemed to more be talking to herself now, if she hadn't been doing that the whole time. Jet listened with maybe half an ear. He was fascinated by the idea of a giant swimming pool. But this sounded much more profound than a swimming pool. He wondered vaguely if it was a real thing or just whatever this joy's brain did on... lizard piss. Good lord. That name could use some workshopping. He snorted grouchily and leaned his head back on the couch and waited for the rest of his crew to be done. Maybe he oughta get up and help them look, but he was just really tired.

"And this other time, I saw like, trees. But they were different, you know? Not palm trees, not joshua trees, not juniper bushes. They were like. Wow how do I describe them. There was branches all over the place, and like. Leaves! They were so bright green I thought I would cry, and there was green fuzzy stuff growing on the trunks, and some of the leaves were all folded over like juniper, but they were flat, and the bark came off in strips. So I peeled off the strips and went inside and became the tree. I was a tree, dude. I know you don't give a fuck but I was a tree.”

-

Kobra was shaking him awake.  
"Found the guy and got the info D wanted; we're going now."

Jet blinked blearily. He barely knew what dimension he was in after that nap.

Kobra yanked him up by the wrists, saying "Man, I don't care if you wanna try stuff, but you should probably have one of us with you in case anything goes sideways." He glanced at Ghoul, standing by the speaker, waiting. "Make that one of us who's sober." 

"No, no, dude, I didn't have any I was just napping."

"Doozy of a nap, huh?" All of them were walking toward the exit.

"Yeah, yeah, but, the girl over there, the one who's upside down? She makes the stuff. Guess what it's called.”

“What"

"Lizard piss.”

Kobra made a face as everyone strode out the door. "Sounds appetizing."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey I'm just posting the backlog of what I have so if you're reading this in real time don't expect chapter updates to be this frequent when I catch up with myself. I think I have an idea for how I'm gonna end this tho.


	3. Safer in the forest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang has a discussion about aliens, Jet gets lost in a song (and his head).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also Jet has synesthesia? Idk apparently I have synesthesia and i forgot that’s not a universal experience so if i’m trying to describe the song and you are like “wtf is even happening” that’s what’s going on. Like i didn’t mean for him to have that i was just trying to get across the deep and spiritual experience of music and it happened on accident ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

The Fab Four sat around the campfire somewhere in the far eastern arc of zone 5. The had just finished trading with The Hermit, who wanted a larger than usual stock of Ghoul’s bombs. He wouldn’t say what he was planning, but advised them all to stay well out of zone 1 in the coming weeks, and grinned devilishly. 

The campfire wasn’t exactly for cooking- it was mostly an excuse to get out of the car and stretch their legs, being that the food the brought with them was “Better Living’s Nutri-Dense Meal Replacement Bar”, usually marketed to BL/ind’s factory workers who didn’t have lunch breaks.

Somehow, literal dog food tasted better than this shit.

The group sat in comfortable silence. Ghoul was making a list of things he’d need to restock- pressure cookers, sugar, duct tape, and a couple pounds of gravel. Kobra was laying on his stomach with his face toward the fire, plucking out his hair one by one and watching the fire singed it. The longer you spent in the desert, the less weird little behaviors like that become. Poison was kneeling behind Jet, braiding his hair.

The sky was up there, still as enormous and star-spangled as ever, but somehow it wasn’t as all-consuming as it usually was, not with all these people and those orange sparks dancing upward to join them. Though Jet felt that if he had been out here alone, the sky would definitely have swallowed him up.

“You guys think there’s something else out there?”

“Like what?” said Kobra

“Out where?” said Ghoul

“Like more people. Or aliens. Out there could mean beyond the zones. Or outer space. I’ll take answers for either one.”

At first there was only the crackling of the fire, but then Poison spoke up from behind him.  
“I kinda think we are the something else that’s out there. You know when you were in the city, and you knew there was something beyond the city border, and it couldn’t be all the fire and destruction and uninhabitable wasteland full of terrorists BL/ind made it out to be? Like there had to be something good out here, so you got out and it turns out we are the good out here? We are the aliens. Well, I guess we’re also the terrorists, we literally just sold a guy bombs so he could go blow shit up in the city, but mostly we’re aliens.”

“I mean, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that we’re the good out here. Not from a moral standpoint, anyway. Brainwashed innocents get caught in the crossfire and all that shit. But I see where you’re coming from.” Jet said.

“Nonononono, I don’t mean we’re doing good, well we’re doing good for us but we’re not doing universal helpy everybody good, no, I mean all you guys are good and I love you.”

“Ooooooooohhhhhh. Love you too.”

“Yeah right back at ya.”

“You don’t suck too bad.”

“Gee thanks Kobra.”

Jet wanted to get back on topic. “Ok but anyway, so if we’re the aliens, the big What’s Out There for people in the city, who’s our aliens. Like real aliens from outer space lookin down at earth goin “oooo look at all those ants millin around down there” and they’ve got no idea that we just had like 2 wars and that everything is owned by a mega corporation and that we have no idea what’s going on outside the state of california- bro are there even states anymore? Like I heard Australia disappeared-“

“you got sidetracked, dude.”

“-oh yeah. Aliens. Ok ok what I’m really lookin for is: Who has the outside perspective on us? Like who is out there, and by out there I mean anyplace that isn’t here- that isn’t experiencing all this bullshit? Do other people even still exist outside the zones? If they do, how do we talk to them? How do we get to them? Does anyone remember the battle of Utah?”

“God that was gross to see on tv.”

“Yeah don’t ask Dr. Death about it he’ll- well. I don’t know but its not good. Like it’s bad for him.”

“Right, right, but what even happened to Utah? Like were people moved into Batt City or were they all killed for opposing?”

“Well the last time I ever paid attention to fact news was when they had captured Salt Lake City and kept getting mobbed with guerrilla warfare from the Moab stronghold.”

“Did we ever find out if Moab survived?”

“If they did it's not like BLI would tell us.”

“You right, you right.”

Jet stopped to look up at the sky again.

Kobra was now sitting up to look at him. “But what about the actual aliens?”

“What about them?”

“Don’t know, but I have a feeling you’re gonna tell me. Y’look like you’re itching to talk about them.”

“Ok. Well. Since you asked. I got this paranormal and unexplained zine last time we went to the Nest and it had a section talking about this secret red planet called uhhh… Nibiru?- hiding behind the moon and it's gonna like, crash into earth or some shit, and it had an excerpt from this book written by some guy in argentina, and he maintains that the way to stop it is by praying and there are all these chants and stuff-“

“Well did you do the chants?”

“No, that’s stupid.”

“So you don’t believe in the secret red moon behind the real moon but you do believe the phoenix witch?”

“Yeah, duh, cause one of those is real and the other is a conspiracy theory.”

Kobra started to reply to this, but thought better of it. He came up with a new question. “Are there any conspiracy theories about there being people outside the zones?”

“Not that i’ve heard. Well, there was that one girl at the bar when we were looking for the green dreads guy but she was just hallucinating. Giant puddle or swimming pool or something way out west. But i don’t know what happens to people who cross the radiation belt. Like i’ve heard that people do it, but they don’t come back.” He was aware that Kobra was not genuinely interested, but he was grateful he was giving him opportunity to talk about his favorite topics anyway.

Suddenly ghoul piped up from where his head was in Kobra’s lap. “I don’t think the radiation belt is real.”

“You don’t?”

“Nuh. They told us there would be acid rain that melts your skin off, but the worst we get is it wears away limestone a little bit. And. Think about it. The helium wars. Helium’s a noble gas, it doesn’t wanna react with anything and it really doesn’t wanna break apart. They’re not nuclear bombs. Nobody ever used nuclear bombs in any of the wars. And even if they did, it’d make no sense for it to be in a circle. The wind’d blow the fallout south by southwest. It’d be everywhere by now.”

“Oh”

“You really put some thought into that.”

“I’m the bomb master, what do you expect.”

Poison was now holding a wrapper between two sticks and trying to get it to melt in the flames. “I wanna go back to the aliens for a sec. What if we’re all in a giant bubble in an experiment run by aliens and that’s why if you go past the edge of zone six you don’t get seen again cause the alien scientists caught you and either had to throw you in the garbage or reintroduce you to the experiment.”

“Cruel fuckin aliens then.”

“You could make a religion out of that.”

“I guess there’s always reincarnation.”

“Back up a minute. What if on any major roads out of the zones there’s aliens waiting in their ufos-“

“I’m gonna stop you right there. UFO stands for unidentified flying object. To the aliens its obviously identified; they made it, they’re living in it-“

“Fine. Flying saucer then. They’re waiting in their flying saucers-“

“Now my question is where’s the flying teacup in this pla-“

“Kobra, shut up! They’re waiting outside zone six to get anyone who comes out and suck em up in their tractor beams and do experiments. They don’t wanna come in here for it cause they know cherri cola would shoot em straight outta the sky.”

“If anyone wantsta get abducted its Jet.”

“Resident alien fucker, Jet Star.”

“You know it.”

“Would you actually fuck an alien though?”

“Only if it wanted to fuck me first.”

“Are we talking anthropomorphic aliens here, or like slimy tentacle freaks.”

“I wouldn’t say no to a slimy tentacle freak.”

“What would you say no to?”

“Anything that looks like a bug. And I think I'd pretty much follow my earth standards. Nice person. Likes me.”

“Are you trying to tell us slimy tentacle freaks aren’t bugs?”

“No, they’re cephalopods! Get with it!” He thought for a minute. A long minute. “But in all seriousness, are we alone out here?”

The rest of the group considered this. It wasn’t the first time Jet had made them think about the wider world.

“I don’t really wanna know.” Said Ghoul. “Either we are alone, and that’s scary cause there’s no one to turn to, no one to help us, and it’d be proof that the world really did go bezerk and we’re like an island of humanity in a bombed out shell of a continent. Or if we aren’t alone, then we don’t know who we’re sharing the universe with and if it's threatening or nah.

“Damn. I don’t like that you put it into words.”

—-

They were chilling in Show Pony’s room at the radio station. Nothing to do. Well, there was everything to do, just nothing important to do and nothing they’d rather do than hang out with Pony. Everyone was sprawled on the floor in as little clothes as was acceptable. Boots and jackets and even a few pants were piled up by the door. Ghoul lay on his stomach, half asleep, pushing a roller skate back and forth and making quiet engine noises. Kobra was trying to engage Pony in a discussion about the plot of his latest mini comic, about a cactus that grew legs and kicked down buildings in Battery City. Pony wasn’t really having it, being that ze looked about as sleepy as ghoul, slumped against Poison’s side, blinking slowly. Poison was out cold anyway. Or out warm. It was so hot in here. But it was even hotter outside. He had half a mind to join them, but could not be assed to move. He continued rifling through Pony’s CD collection. The Offspring. Huh. Pony didn’t seem like an offspring kinda guy. The goo goo dolls. Maybe. David Bowie. Yeah, Pony definitely seemed like a bowie person.

“Jet Star?” Boomed Dr D’s voice from outside.  
Ok. Maybe he could be assed to move. He got up and sidled down the hall into the lair. He wondered what made it a lair, other than everyone called it that. It was more like a cave than a room, though; wall to wall with record shelves made from old milk crates; tangles of wires snaking along the walls, held up by nails; boxes upon boxes of cassette tapes and CDs; stacked up boom boxes, some gutted, others modified beyond recognition. Despite it being dark and closed in, it was kept pretty neat, the floor always clear so D could maneuver his wheelchair around properly.

“Yeah?”

“I’ve got some tunes for you, space case. Think you’ll like em. Found this bad boy in the back of a drawer. A friend of mine from way back recorded it.” He handed him a cassette tape, unmarked except for “FOG AUGER” written in sharpie on some masking tape.  
Jet didn’t bother responding, just nodded and immediately plopped on the floor next to the stack of boom boxes. He pushed the tape in with a pleasant c-chunk noise. D handed him a pair of headphones and he plugged them into the jack and put them on.  
He pressed play.

At first he was self conscious and trying to keep a straight face. But D wasn’t paying any attention to him, back at his desk with headphones on, taking down morse code on a sheet of paper.  
So he let himself lean back against the shelves and listened closely to the music. If he let himself relax, he could practically see the shapes of the sounds. Did that make any sense? Probably not. But the bass had a notable breadth to it, wider, as it climbed and fell in the background. It was thick and slow, like a river of chocolate. Not that he had ever seen a river or eaten more than 1 piece of chocolate. If the bass was brown, or some deep warm color, then the guitar on top was yellow with some blue mixed in. Little dots shone out and then faded, one string plucked at a time- no chords. Until a second guitar came in with a ribbon of purple, frayed at the edges. The drums spiked in a warmer, sharper yellow than what the first guitar had. It was mostly blue now anyway. 

When the song ended, he was left alone in the silence, just a slight electric buzzing from the headphones. Was there really only one song on the tape? He pressed rewind and the garbled fast backward noises filled his ears until the song started again.

This time he lay on the ground, staring up at the white and brown water damaged ceiling, not paying any attention to the colors. The song took him someplace in his mind, someplace he had never been before. He could see it so clearly, though. A gray sky scraped at by fir trees, a rain soaked gravel road curving into the middle distance, and off to the right was a little driveway overgrown by grass and weeds. His attention was drawn to a dark log cabin squatting in front of a wall of trees. The wood was gray from years of rain and sun, and there was moss and ferns growing on the roof. A gust of wind shook the maple tree beside the house and yellow orange leaves twirled down.

The song ended again, too quickly. Quiet static replaced those beautiful sounds as the scene faded. He sighed and didn’t bother to move. His brain melted and he became one with the static.

At some point during his time with the static, Pony came in, doing something at the desk. Sometime later, he was vaguely aware of Dr. Death’s voice reading off the traffic report.

“Earth to Jet Star, come in, Jet Star” Pony said jokingly, waving a hand in front of his face. “Damn you really are a space case, huh. What have you been listening to?” Ze popped the tape out of the player. “Ohhhhh. That’s a good one. Doesn’t it kinda make you feel like you’re nostalgic for a place you’ve never been?”

“Yes! Did you see the cabin too?” He was awed that Pony understood what he was feeling without him even having to say.

“What cabin? No i’ve never actually seen anything, it's just a feeling I get. Makes me kinda sad.”

“Oh.” Never mind. Ze knew like half the feeling. “No I saw- or- felt- actually no. The whole shebang. All the senses. I experienced. Uh. I was in the woods, like in those books we found in the basement of. Wait hold on ok.” He scrunched his face up, trying to get his thoughts in order. Pony waited patiently but it was clear ze was having a really rough time following all his interruptions and long pauses. “Remember when we were exploring the basement of that pre-war school out by the old LA crater?”

“Yeah.”

“And remember the books we found with the barcodes all crossed out because they were ‘no longer fit for curriculum’?”

“Yeah’i thought that woulda been the moment when BL/ind started getting into the old school system, bu-“

“-no the schools aren't the point I just want you to remember the books.”

“Yeah ok i remember the books.”

“And remember when we looked inside them there were all sorts a pictures of plants no one had ever seen before?”

“Well i’m pretty sure D and Cherri have seen them before.” Ze turned around and said to Dr Death “Hey do you remember trees? Like are they still a thing?”

D looked up from his work and frowned. “We have trees here. Look outside.”

“No, you know what I mean. The big honkin trees what’s so big y’cant even get yer arms ‘round em and fuckin thirty feet tall and shaped like a reeeeeeeeeal stretched out triangle? With skinny ass branches and weird leaves?” Ze was talking excitedly with zer hands, well, zer whole body- ze had gone through several different tree poses, trying to show what the picture of the trees they had seen was like without actually having the picture there.

D just raised his eyebrows, used to these antics. “Are you thinking of conifers?”

“Yeah! Yeah! Are those still a thing?”

“If they are, they’d be up north. When I was a kid, there was a national park for these redwood trees. I don’t know if its still there. I had never gone myself.” He turned back to his desk.

Pony turned back to Jet. “Conifers?”

“I mean I guess so. There were a couple different kinds and i didn’t get close enough to see.”

“Damn it so cool that you /went/ someplace. Or just imagined so hard you got yeeted out of this dimension. Ok but you saw the trees from the nature book, and then what.”

“No it wasn’t exactly the trees from the book. It wasn’t that picture, that was just the closest thing that I was sure you had seen too. But there was a whole ass forest and the sky was super dark and cloudy and-“ he told Pony all about what he had seen. When he got to the cabin bit he finished with “and i felt like i lived there, man. It was so familiar, but also so far away and weird, like I hadn't been there in a really long time? And I had been wanting to go back and now i was there and it was weird and cold but not in a bad scary way, just different from what I'm used to way.” Pony was holding his hand in zer lap and listening intently. “I need to get back there, i need to go there, but I don't even know where it is, in the same way that I know exactly where it is, but I've never been there before, and I don't even know if it exists for real, and-“ there was a lump in his throat. He stopped talking, mouth clamped tight. He wouldn’t cry over a song, he wouldn’t cry over imagining too hard, he wouldn’t cry over the feeling of displacement and longing, and he most definitely won’t cry in front of Dr Death, who just wanted to show him a cool song, not dump him into a pit of half formed visions and incomprehensible emotion.

He got up, made to hand the tape back to Dr D, but instead he found himself asking “Do you mind if I borrow this?”  
“Liked it, huh? Thought you would.” But it was a few seconds before he actually answered the question. D stared at him long and hard, lips pursed to one side. “Sure.” He said finally. “Bring it back safe, though, that thing’s one of a kind.”  
-  
He spent the rest of the evening at the diner with the tape in the crew’s own cassette deck, pressing rewind every 4 minutes and staring straight ahead at the ugly wood paneling on the far wall. Eventually he slumped forward on the table, one with the static again.

He nearly leaped out of his skin when Poison walked up behind him and touched his shoulder.  
After their “Woah, woah, sorry sorry sorry its just me.” He pulled them into the booth next to him and yanked off the headphones.

“Here, I want you to listen to this. Death showed it to me today while you were napping.”  
Poison took the headphones and put them on, and Jet pressed play. They sat perfectly still, eyes closed. Jet watched their face closely, as if he could see they were having the same thoughts as he did, if they were transported to someplace wet and cool and green.

They opened their eyes and gave an approving nod. “Yep, that’s pretty good, i’m vibin.”

“Does it remind you of anything?”

They thought about this. “Should it?”

“Well i guess not, but when I listened to it I–“ he told them what he had seen, same as he had done with Show Pony.

“That’s fascinating how much you can get out of just one song. But i don’t think i can say I got anywhere close to the same thing.”

“What did you get?”

“I dunno. Just a sense of melancholy. Like its very chill. I’d lay on the floor and be sad to that.”

“But I don't want to be sad to that, and i’m tired of lying on the floor. I want to find this place. Or. Need to. Or. Fuck.”

He didn’t know if he needed to find that specific place or just get out of this place in general.   
He banged his head down on the table.


	4. When the levee breaks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> jet is all wrapped up inside his own head again big surprise. Something breaks. He leaves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey its been a few months. I'm enjoying college very much and have made some friends. towards the end of this chapter is where the story started in my brain and I've been working backwards from there. I've had it written for forever I just haven't posted it. I was gone for so long AO3 logged me out.  
Anyway, hope some of you still care and that you enjoy this

He was laying on the roof again, this time with the radio. He had the antenna extended all the way and was trying to balance a little piece of aluminum foil on top to get a better signal. He fiddled with the chanel dial, sliding between the frequencies. He wanted to pick something up, but he wasn’t sure what it was. He was only sure what it wasn’t. He didn’t want Dr. D’s pirate radio station, and he definitely didn’t want whatever Better Living was broadcasting. He came across DJ Hot Chimp’s frequency by accident- she hopped back and forth to avoid getting caught. But he didn’t want anything from the zones or the city. Nothing from this godforsaken desert. He wanted something from outside, some proof that life still existed beyond the outer zones.  
And he wasn’t getting any.

Maybe he oughta try Citizen’s Band radio, way back from a time when citizen just meant any old layperson (not military or commercial use), and not an Authorized Citizen of Battery City. Dr. D probably had a CB radio.

He thought about walking there. D probably wouldn’t want a visitor this late at night. Well, maybe. Time was fake. He probably wouldn’t be too keen on teaching Jet how a CB radio works and how to use it and how to tell where a signal is coming from this late at night. Sure, people were more active at night when it was cool, but it was more chill-out personal activities that happened after dark.  
But still, he could walk there right now.   
Yeah, as if that would get him an answer any sooner, its not like if there were people out there they would be talking into their radios like “Hello there is life out here you have an excuse to leave the zones Jet.”  
Oh damn. Did he really want to leave the zones? This is where he’d been his whole life (the part that’s important to him anyway), this is where his family lives, this is where he knows how to survive. It sucks sometimes. Or. A lot of the time. But still. Could he really leave the zones?

Actually, yeah. Hell yeah. He could start walking and never turn back, keep going until he found the mysterious cabin and a real forest with real trees, and rain that fell more than a few months of the year. He could make a whole new life.  
Well, no he couldn’t. As much as everyone hated the city, it was pretty much how everyone survived. Raiding grocery shipment trucks, scrounging in the trash heaps, stealing from inside the walls. Fuck. He didn’t want to be dependent on the City.

He wasn’t sure if he had known that all along and it just now hit him, or if it was a genuinely new realization. They weren’t rebels. They weren’t changing anything. They were just rats living off the scraps. And sometimes the city sent the cat out to kill.  
This thought, while not a shock, did suddenly become real after years of ignoring it, and it nearly bowled him over with the force of it. Everything in him dissolved into a puddle of black goo. Something in him broke a little bit. Not a snap, not a shatter, just a little pop. A fuse blew and he powered down, slumping sideways and covering his face with his arms. Fuck all this. What is it even for huh? Nothing any of them did was worthwhile. What was the point of doing this? Just that he couldn’t take it? Everyone else took it just fine, BL/ind meds or not. What, was he just weak or selfish or something? Just here to be a squatter cause he couldn’t handle city life and nobody out here was organized or powerful enough to make any real change? They were all kidding themselves.

Couldn’t think about that anymore. Fucking sucked. Think about nothing. He spent so much time not being able to think and so much time trying to think, why couldn’t he just sink back into that staticky nothingness now?

He moved to turn off the faintly hissing radio, but his hand didn’t quite make it all the way there, just flopped down next to it.

Fuck this.

It was then- or maybe not then, it could have been half an hour later- that Poison stuck their head up through the hatch. “Any good stars tonight?”

“Look up, dingus, its cloudy.” He said in his head. But the words didn’t actually come out. He just stayed still. Was he still against his will or could he really just not be assed to talk to his own datemate?

When he didn’t respond, Poison climbed out onto the roof with him. “Y’good?”

“Yeah I’m fine.” he almost said. “Not really.” he said in his mind. “Hrng.” he said out loud.

Poison just laid down next to him with a sigh. “I’ll take that as a no.” They brought a hand up to stroke his hair. He flinched. Not in the fear way, just in the ‘didn’t see that coming’ way, though mentally he was expecting it, his body didn’t seem to get the message.

Poison looked at him worriedly again. 

"I don't know how to help you man.”

"I don't know how to help me, either.”

They were silent for a long while, just petting his hair. It should have felt good. On days he was ok, he could practically feel the love radiating off of them, felt some kind of peace or excitement at their touch, but now he felt nothing, and that was what bothered him most.

"Should we ask the Witch?”

"If you think she'll help.”

"It doesn't matter if She can actually hear us, it just makes me feel better to say it, and that's almost help in itself.”

"Makes sense." He loved that about Party. Their little spiritual musings that came up now and then, how honest they were with themself about their relationship with something bigger and the great confusion of life.

“O Phoenix Witch, your child is ill  
As you arise from the ashes,   
Let his brain arise from the static  
May the flame of your feathers  
Bring the warmth of life into him.  
Burn away all that is making him sick  
And I might always have cause to praise you.”

Jet smiled at the familiar words, but behind his eyes was still dull. He mumbled along with Poison's clear voice.

“O Phoenix Witch, I am ill  
As you arise from the ashes,  
Let my brain arise from the static  
May the flame of your feathers  
Bring the warmth of life into me.  
Burn away all that is making me sick  
And I might always have cause to praise you.”

— a few days later —

It was the middle of the night and he felt trapped. He lay under the covers, mind twisting and seething. Trapped under the covers, in this bed, in this diner, in this desert, in this body, in his own mind. His brain itched so bad he wanted to claw his skin off and crack his skull open just to scratch it and release some of the pressure.

Wait a minute, wait a minute. There was nothing actually keeping him here. He could get out of bed any time he wanted, he did it all the time to go pee. He could walk out that door any time he felt like it, lord knows Ghoul got up in the middle of the night enough. Nothing was stopping him.

He rolled to the edge of the bed and staggered out the bedroom door, then through the kitchen.  
He made it to the outside door.  
Stopped.  
Turned around, grabbed his boots and shoved his feet into them, didn’t bother tying them.  
Walked back to the door.  
Stopped.  
Turned around, grabbed a water bottle.  
Walked back to the door again, nearly pushed it open.  
Stopped.  
Turned around, got a can of power pup and another water bottle, tossed them into an empty bag from under the sink.  
Walked back to the door.  
Pushed it open, stumbled out onto the sand, would have felt the cool night air if he could feel anything.

He looked up at the sky and wondered vaguely where he was going. There was Ursa Major, her tail pointing to Polaris. He wondered if he followed it far enough he would find something new. Get beyond whatever border there was. The radiation. Couldn’t be real, right? Nah, if he didn’t want it to be real then it wasn’t real. Everything is fake. I’m fake. He didn’t even have a body anymore he was just floating along, observing and not judging. Just walk. Forward and forward and forward and step and step and step and crunch and crunch and crunch.

-

He had to take a leak. He started to wander off the road but then thought, “There’s no one here to see me, and there’s no one here to tell me no.”  
He stood smack in the middle of the road and pissed on the yellow center line.  
“I’m such a rebel.” He thought, almost laughing. It was more like a grimace and a sharp exhale. Then he remembered they technically were rebels, that was the whole point of living out here. Were they really, though? He guessed they were squatting in an abandoned diner, and he supposed according to BL/ind their existence was explicitly illegal. But they weren’t doing a whole lot. The conventions of the zones were still conventions, if much more loosey goosey. And they weren’t super focused on taking down BL/ind, no one group had that power and they were awful at organizing. Nobody wanted to be a soldier, and most people didn’t want to be a hero either. Or as the city would see them, a villain. Not that they weren’t villains in the first place. But people just wanted to live their lives in peace. 

He didn’t bother to walk on the road. He went as straight as he possibly could with Polaris right in front of him, pushing through the scrub brush at his ankles, only veering off to go around a patch of cactus here and there. A quarter of the water was gone. He looked into the distance, past the orange glow of the city off to the left and into the unknown. Somewhere above the horizon he thought he saw a red light flash. He stood still for a minute, desert stretching out around him on all sides. He cared nothing for that vast, expansive emptiness, because when he breathed deeply, filled his lungs up all the way, he swore he could feel himself pushing against the edges of something. Rooted to the spot, he stared into the distance, trying to catch the red light again. How far away had it been? Had he really seen it, or were his eyes just being weird?  
He walked on.


	5. Jet? Jet?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jet is missing and its uh-oh stinky

Poison stumbled out into the kitchen, squinting against the morning light.  
Kobra was opening a can of green beans, Ghoul sat on the counter by him, slurping the juice out of a can of diced pineapple.

They surveyed the shelf of cans for suitable breakfast food. The spoils from the trash heap trip were almost half gone. That’s what happens when four people have to eat three times a day. And they all knew that, but it was disappointing to see things disappear so fast.

They chose some chicken noodle soup. “From the Better Living Kitchen... to yours” said the label in its best attempt to seem like “home cooking”. They rolled their eyes and waited for Kobra to finish with the can opener.

“Know where Jet is?”

“Think I heard him get up last night n go outside. Prob’ly chillin on the roof again.”

“‘Kay.”

They ate their respective canned breakfasts, still reveling in the novelty of having something to eat other than Power Pup.  
Kobra mentioned how they thought they ought to invest in one of those giant 40 lb sacks of rice. Or dried beans. Or flour. They would have to head into a neutral town or make a special request for smugglers to get some bulk rice from the city, but it would probably last them a while. 

The others agreed, but wondered about water. Canned things were nice ‘cause they were ready to eat and had plenty of water in them already. If they bought dry goods they’d have to find a way to cook it. Nobody really wanted to use the drinking water, which left the rain barrels and the well. Using the well for water was always a big occasion, since there was no electricity for the pump. They would use precious gas in the generator for the pump, ran everything for a while, making the most out of running water while they had it. Every empty vessel in the entire place was filled with water, which included everything from water bottles to buckets to giant galvanized tubs. The thing was, the water that came out was green and kind of smelly. But Ghoul had rigged up a solar still for making gross water into potable water, which was fine for having a glass now and then, but it was really too small to be of any use for soaking beans or boiling rice.  
Ghoul was confident he would work something out for expanding the still, or making a filtration system.

“Sun’s all the way up now. Someone better go see if Jet wants breakfast.”

“I’ll go.”

“Ask him if he wants to come on a bulk bean adventure.”

“‘Kay.”

Poison clambered up the ladder from the janitor’s closet and stuck their head through the trap door in the ceiling, peeking out onto the shingles.  
Wait. They didn’t see Jet.  
They stuck their shoulders up out too, spinning a full 360. The roof was empty.   
“Jeeeet?” They called, just to be sure.  
No response.  
They climbed back down.

“He’s not up there.”

“Hm. Check out back?”

No luck. Every room in the diner. No luck. Area outside the diner. Nothing.  
Poison, if anything, was frustrated. Where’d that bastard go?  
Maybe he went to go hang out with Pony. Pretty rude of him not to say so first, cause Poison would definitely have wanted to hang out with Pony.

Made sense. The car and the bike were still there, and Dr. D’s station was the only interesting place to go on foot.  
But when they walked the two miles there, Pony was out delivering a message, and Jet was nowhere to be found.  
Walking back, their frustration morphed into worry.

Their crew members rarely left without telling anyone, and when they did it was cause they were feeling funky, which, they supposed, was probably exactly the time you ought to say something but the funkiness inhibited that.  
But Jet usually stuck around when he got that dead, half-there look in his eyes, usually crashed on the couch or on the roof or a table and just wouldn’t move for a few hours.

Back in the diner, Poison poked his head in on Kobra and Ghoul. “Hey uhh. Jet’s not at D’s station.”

Ghoul looked up, brows furrowed. “There’s nowhere to go on foot out here. Hid he just up and start walking in some random direction?”

“I mean, there’s the alien sighting discussion club at the Nest. You know how much he’s been wanting contact with the outside world, whatever that means.”

“Yeah, but you can’t really walk there.”

“You said Pony was out on a message, right? Maybe he went with zem?”

“I mean it's possible but I asked Dr D and he said he hadn’t heard or seen him. How worried am I supposed to be here? Like I’ve wandered off for personal reasons before- am I supposed to be respecting his privacy and give him space? But then again, I always come back before dark, or before breakfast, whichever it happens to be, and when he wanders off its almost always to the roof.”

Ghoul rubbed his nose thoughtfully. “Yeh i’guess, but if you get up an’ leave in the middle of the night and don’t come back then probably all bets are off and everyone else has a right to come find you.”

Kobra nodded. “Not super worried about Jet, he can handle himself, but maybe some scarecrows got him when he went for a walk I don’t know.”

“You are not making my worries any better, man!”

“You know ‘crows don’t like to come out this way it just ain’t worth it for them.”

“But still, don’t even say that I’m gonna lose my mind!”

“Kay, how bout if we drive out to the Nest and check around, will that make you feel better?”

“Only if Jet’s actually there.”

“No duh, I guess.”

-

No luck at the nest, but Kobra did trade a comic for the latest zine someone made on UFO sightings in case Jet would want to read it later.

Poison definitely wasn’t bothering to mask their worry now. They were speed walking five or six steps ahead of Kobra and Ghoul, going through all the next places they could check out loud. “…drive out to Newsie’s hideout and ask her no what the fuck would he want with newsie maybe the hyper thrust maybe he left something there nah how about cherri yeah cherri has some stories from before the wars I bet he’d want to hear those ok but that’s way in the opposite direction have we even got enough gas for this bullshit what if he did get taken how are we gonna break into the city and break him out-“

“Poison!”

“What?”

“Car’s back here, dingus.”

Wrapped up in their frenzied thoughts they had walked right past the car. They jogged back, more frustrated than embarrassed.

“Poison,” Kobra said again. “BL/ind didn’t take Jet. I guarantee it.”

“No shade but you can’t guarantee shit out here.”

“Fine. But you know most of the units are up in zone 1 defending the construction.”

“uuuuuuuuugh fuck that noise don’t remind me. Just build some taller buildings in the city, why don’t they— this is my fucking desert.” 

Everyone was settled in the car now. Poison was in the driver’s seat, Ghoul was wondering why Kobra let them have it.

“So… are we going home now?”

“No we’re going to check in Cherri’s junk pile.”

“No we’re-“ he sighed. “Ok, whatever.”

Jet was not in Cherri’s junk pile, stealing or hiding or otherwise. Nobody was surprised. When Poison told Cherri of their plight, he just nodded knowingly from his rocking chair and said “Desert makes people do funny things sometimes. You get out there in the middle of the night and lose all sense of self. Where you’re from and where you’re going. When I was— I had some— well. The sun and I have had some problems in the past, and when I was gettin to the end of it, I’d go outside at night and just walk. It was cold and dark and that’s what made it so good. Some nights it helped, and some nights it didn’t. And when it doesn’t help it really doesn’t. When I finally got the sun to stop talking to me, the moon started.”

Poison told him it was the least helpful thing he’d ever said.

He just leaned waaaaaay back in the rocking chair. “Be sure to bring that coffee can back.”

“Why? Its just got nails in it.”

“Might need it.”

“Fine. Whatever. See you around, Cherri.”

On the way home they stopped to talk to Dr. Death one more time, see if he had heard or seen anything. He hadn’t, of course. Pony lay on the floor, pooped from the day’s delivery service. When asked if ze had seen Jet around on zer route ze said no, and ze hadn’t been everywhere today, only south and east of the station.

It was weird to see the fab four as just three, and Ghoul’s forced casual voice gave zem pause.

Ze offered to ride back to the diner with them and help look in the morning. There was only about 2 hours of daylight left.

Now Poison was left in the back seat with Pony. Kobra drove to make sure they all actually made it home instead of taking some detour to check another unlikely place.

-

That night, Poison sat on the concrete log that used to be a parking space divider. Well, it still was, but it wasn’t like anybody parked there. They had a juice box in one hand and a strip of jerky in the other.

Pony skated around them in giant swirly loops, waiting for them to collect themself.

They never did, so ze just brought the circles tighter and tighter and finally sat down next to them on the concrete.

“Nobody’s seen him. Its like he was zapped off the face of the earth.”

Pony was silent for a long moment. “I was gonna say something important but my train of thought ran away with me and i got to thinkin about how weird it is to exist when there’s nobody else watching. Like Jet only exists when he’s physically in front of you, but you keep existing even when you’re all alone. Like there is no Jet in our immediate vicinity and we’re thinking about him so he exists in our brains, and obviously he still exists in the world, but not right in front of us and we have no idea what’s going on with him. But like. I’m always in my body and I'm always having thoughts even when no one’s around to witness it and I exist to nobody except myself.”

Poison took a long slurp of juice. “Was that supposed to be comforting or are you just wack about object permanence?”

“Nonono you’re missing my point.”

“What is your point?”

“Its.... you know what? I don’t know. Well maybe it was that just because nobody’s seen you doesn’t mean you’ve been zapped off the face of the earth.” Ze reached over and tore off a piece of their jerky. “But knowing jet, being zapped off the face of the earth or being abducted by aliens would be a dream come true. Maybe he got up last night, saw the mothership and was like ‘aw yiss’ and was sucked up in the tractor beam like shoooop.”

“Yup.”

“Don’t think so, huh?”

“Nope.”

Silence fell over them again. It wouldn’t have been a tense silence, but Poison was practically oozing tenseness.

“Hey,” Pony said, softer, less joking. “He’s never been uh. Suicidal, has he?” Ze looked over at Poison, trying to catch whatever was going on in their face.

“Huh? Oh. No, no, I don’t think so. He’s just been super mm, quiet and lethargic. Lately. No, like, if it was Kobra that up and walked out in the middle of the night and we couldn’t find him i’d be losing my shit.”

“Aren’t you already kind of losing your shit?”

“You underestimate just how much shit I can lose.”

Another pause. “I really reeeeeally wanna make a poop joke.”

“God. Fuck. I can’t decide if that’s why I love you or why i hate you.”

“I’d say it's why you love me.”

“Fine. If you say so.” They learned their head on zer shoulder.

“What places were you thinking of checking tomorrow?”

“Newsie’s hideout. Maybe the witch’s garden? We were talking about her the other day, and how he said his brain felt all itchy and numb, and how he was tired and grouchy and pulled toward something, and we said a healing prayer, so maybe he went there to talk to her and get his shit figured out.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“And then uh. I don’t know. We’ll just drive around in circles lookin for him i guess. And then we’ll uh. Fuck. I guess we’ll go into the city, but how do we even go about that? Like there’s no way to know where he is in there, especially if he was captured and they’re trying to reeducate him, and I don’t know how we would get past security or even find him- or like why, if he just went out to take a piss or a midnight walk, and if some drac or scarecrow found him, why would they take him and not just ghost him on the spot? Fuck, should we be looking for a body? And—“

Pony pulled Poison into zer lap, scooting off the log and onto the ground. Zey pressed their head into zer chest and patted their hair.

“-really fucked me up with that suicidal question like i’m no stranger to wanting to claw my skin off and shit but maybe that’s what he meant by staticky brain maybe the pull was the call of the void, he did just kinda stop doing stuff, except for reading the alien zine, man i’m—“

Pony just held them.  
“You might be getting ahead of yourself here. We’re a long way from writing anyone’s name on the mailbox.” 

They didn’t answer.

“Maybe we should go to bed, yeah?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello from 2020! college is going great but this story is not. I know how I want to resolve it (several chapters from now don't worry I have those planned and written) but the actual act of... detailing what happens. is difficult. But that's a long time from now. I hope you all enjoyed this and haven't forgotten about this fic. I've forgotten about many longfics I was in the middle of reading in favor of studying and friendship. (I have friends now that's pretty cool)  
see you all next chapter!


	6. inflatable plastic alien

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jet's out of the diner and probably out of his mind too

When the sun rose he just kept walking in the same direction, eyes glued to the horizon. His body moved stumblingly across the sand, tripping over rocks and soft patches of sand, narrowly avoiding clumps of prickly pears. His mind was somewhere else entirely. 

He was walking through a forest. The trees around him could have been as tall as the skyscrapers of Battery City, their trunks so thick he couldn’t have gotten his arms around them if he tried. Their branches were covered in tiny needles, each one holding a slivery raindrop. Mist hung about the trees and completely obscured whatever was beyond the dropoff down a steep hill to his left, just white beyond the trees, like the world was a painting God hadn’t quite finished yet. Every inhale filled his mouth with cool, wet air. Sword ferns grew in clumps where the trees were thinner and the light was brighter, their pointed leaves spraying out like fountains or fireworks. Woody salal bushes with tough leaves grew on the edges of the shadiest parts. Not that he knew the names of any of these plants. The ground was damp and dark, made of decomposing fir needles and maple leaves. It was so soft he could barely hear his own footsteps. 

Wait. He could see his own footsteps. No not see. Hear. Yeah. He could hear his feet crunching on gravel and sand. 

The trees and mist faded, the salal morphed into a juniper bush. The air became uncomfortably dry in his nose. Damn it. Where did I go? Why am I back? He sat down in what little shade the juniper bush gave, making up for what it didn’t by draping his jacket over it. Pulling out a can of power pup and downing the rest of the water bottle, he pondered what he had seen. It had flooded him with a sense of peace and wellbeing, and he desperately wanted to go back there. Being back in this hot blue and tan emptiness made his throat tighten for a reason he couldn’t quite describe. He didn’t cry, though. That’d be a waste of water. That place must exist. What had he done to see it? What had he done to feel it so completely? 

He stared out into nothing and slumped sideways to nap until sundown.  
There were no dreams, prophetic or otherwise.

If anything, being asleep was more real than being awake. Being asleep was normal. His ciracdian rhythm was backwards, but what wasn’t backwards? He knew how to eat, drink, walk, and how to lie down and let himself go to sleep. But he wasn’t sure how to think. Wasn’t sure what to do when he woke up. Something said he ought to head back to wherever he was from, there were important entities there.

Huh? He wasn’t a person, he was a plant walking around. He looked at a saguaro cactus. He was a cactus. There were his arms and his legs. And his nose. He realized he was looking at the cactus and not his own body. Slowly he turned his head to look down at himself. Fragile. Too many tender fleshy bits. Not enough spines. I’m an awful weird looking cactus. 

He drank the other half of the other water bottle and looked suspiciously at the can of power pup. The seal was broken. He wondered how long it had been like that. In the fading light of dusk he couldn’t quite see the expiration date either. He opened it and sniffed. Smelled fine. Nothing visibly wrong with it, and a man needs to eat. Yeah, tasted fine. A little stale, if anything. But everything was stale. 

His body felt like a baked potato and his mind like a squashed pea. His eyes burned. The air was stale and the sand was stale and the horizon was stale and the blinking red light was startlingly fresh. 

Stale. The word didn’t even mean anything. Stale stale stale steele steal stole sting ale pale grail fail feel feel feel feeeeeel stale feel stale fresh never frozen be sure to check out the Better Living Fresh section and your neighborhood grocery store. Guaranteed comfort, best selection, lowest price. Why buy a mattress anywhere else DING. Save money, live better. Better Living Easy Mart. Ding. Ding. Dingdingdinggalingalinga bing bong. Bong water. Drink bong water to gain magic powers! Hold up. What the fuck am I thinking what is going on in my brain right now?

He got up, feeling his roots rip out of the ground. Most of the stars were out now. He put his jacket back on and tucked the half empty dog food can into the bag. He felt vaguely that he should think about what he was doing, but that was hard and made him feel gross inside. Probably because he knew he was making a series of bad decisions and to think too hard about it was to admit that he was doing something he probably shouldn’t be doing and then he would have to think about what he was doing and why he was doing it in the first place. Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.   
The truth was he wasn’t really thinking at all, he was just operating on whim and gut feeling. Or just wackiness. 

As he walked, he felt jarred and confused at the fact he could just get up and move around. Why wasn’t he a plant? Where were his roots? But he marched ever forward, feeling his legs growing impossibly longer, his strides enormous, covering tons of ground in record time. So tall, on stilts. Saw the ground from very far away. Well not super far away. Just like being on a ladder. Far enough that it screwed with his depth perception. Or maybe his depth perception was screwed in the first place and that’s why his legs were so long. But he was moving so fast, the wind wooshing in his ears. He let himself carry on like that and the stars became streaks and he sped toward the horizon, hair streaming and stretching out miles behind him.

“Slow down,” Said the giant blow up alien that sat on the mountain. He had gotten that for Pony at the Zone 5 Fun Fair. “You cannot make that journey in your physical body in one night.” The red light blinked and diffused through the plastic alien, filling it up with a red glow for a minute before winking out again.  
He slowed down, pulling all the tendrils of his being back into himself, legs shrinking back down, hair catching up. When he came to a stop he looked around and couldn’t see the alien on the mountain anymore. He stood there for a while while his brain sloshed around and his eyes jumped and twitched to focus on something, like when you’re dizzy and the room is spinning around you. He didn’t know what the fuck was going on in his brain and he really didn’t give a fuck either. He was the only thing alive in the entire universe. 

There was no one to hear him, so he giggled at the absurdity of it all, and how his imagination ran away with him when he was alone. He got a brief flash of a memory from when he had first come to the desert. He had felt this way before. Out in the middle of nowhere. The memory brought with it a stab of sadness or shame or something and washed away all the giddy euphoria in less than a second, and instead he was filled with anger about walking for miles and seeing something so beautiful and peaceful it could have made him cry but not being able to ever get there, never getting out of this endless desert. He was so angry at the way the cold prickled at his cheeks and eyeballs, and at the sand in his boots, and the cold sweat on his back, and the lack of control he felt over his own brain. 

The anger zapped down his arms and clenched in his stomach and coiled up in his lungs, ready to pounce out and destroy the entire world. He screamed into the emptiness. And again, guttural and growling, like a lion. He shook out his mane and ran farther and farther until he couldn’t anymore. Lions live on the savannah, not in the desert. So he keeled over and died and lay there for days until his organs and tissues expanded and swelled and his stomach split open and the intestines spilled out and the vultures came to pick at his lion body. 

He rolled over. His stomach hurt. The blow up alien hovered in the sky over him, saying “shhhh, shhhhh, be quiet now, you’ll wake up the ants.”

It was too real out here. Wait no. It was was too real out here. Wait no. Fuck. It was… too dark… and easy to think up not real things. Yeah. Sorta. Ok. The lion thing. Fake. The plant thing. Maybe fake. The stretched out swoopy tall running thing. Fake. The woods thing. Definitely real. The blow up alien. Rrrrrre- fake. The blinking red light. Real. Probably a cell tower. Wait. Were cell towers real anymore? Who cared- his stomach hurt too bad. He had the sense his stomach had been hurting for a long time before that but he hadn’t noticed. There was definitely something wrong with that power pup.

He curled up on his side and tried not to give a fuck. He gave many fucks. Maybe this whole thing was because he gave too many fucks. Why couldn’t he just be happy where he was? He had already gotten out of one bad living situation, and it wasn’t like living in the diner was bad at all. Why couldn’t he just appreciate what he had. Oh fuck. His crew. Did he not appreciate them either? Why had he just up and left them in the middle of the night? Did he even have a plan for getting back? No, of course not, there had been no plan in the first place- he had just started walking and put no thought into the long term effects of this. 

His stomach lurched and nausea surged through him. He swallowed hard. At least he had the sense to bring food and water with him before he left. When he kneeled to dig around in the bag for the water bottle, his mouth filled with saliva and he could not stop the vomit from spilling out of him. The bag was tossed aside in favor of crouching on all fours and heaving. 

He should have just stayed home and talked to someone. But secretly he knew if he was to feel that way again he would have done the exact same thing. Oh fuck this. Fuck the entire world. Fuck him and his stupid ass decisions and not thinking about shit before he did it. Oh who was he kidding he knew damn well he hadn’t been thinking about jack shit for the past two days. 

His stomach clenched one more time and nothing came out. He knelt there, panting, hair hanging down, coming dangerously close to touching the steaming, stinking pool of vomit. When he was sure it was over, he found the water bottle and swished some around in his mouth, trying to get rid of that stomach acid taste. Fuck this. He staggered over to some random bush in the darkness and curled up under it. It poked his face. Whatever. If he could sleep he could figure out what to do when he woke up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> its been so long since I wrote this I have no idea what happens in it i'm listening to Two Trucks by lemon Demon and avoiding an english paper.


	7. turn left at the puke puddle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hmm I promised spikedpoppies I would write the next chapter, but that was when I was still physically in college. Well, this chapter has been written for a while and Yikes its late. But I have a couple epilogues in mind so I think this might actually get finished.

"Mystery lump, two o' clock." Ghoul said, gesturing vaguely out the passenger side window.

"Bro this is the third mystery lump. We've already come screeching to a halt for a garbage bag and a rotting log.”

"Mystery lump, three o' clock." He repeated. "Oh wait. Oh shit! That's him! I saw the jacket!”

"This really isn't good for the brakes." Kobra grumbled, but he was secretly hopeful too. He brought the car skidding to a halt on the side of the road. Poison scrambled out of the car and pounded across the hard packed dust to the dark form on the ground. He got closer and glimpsed the american flag with a spider on it through the sagebrush. It was Jet Star's jacket all right, and there was Jet himself, lying underneath it.

Poison stooped down next to him. He was sweating like mad but his face was pale. Something smelled awful. A few feet away was a puddle of vomit next to a half empty can of Power Pup.

Ghoul came up behind them, put a hand on their shoulder. "What did he...." He took in the scene. "What did he do?”

"Hhhy wz jss wakn mn.” Came Jet’s voice from the ground.

"Jet, baby, what were you doing out here? We woke up and you were gone and we looked on the roof and you weren't there and we asked Pony and you weren't with them and we checked with Tommy and with Cherri and Newsie and nobody knew where you were and we've just been driving around random places looking for you we thought you maybe went outside and got taken by a scarecrow or something,"   
They were talking very fast and paused only a second for an enormous, shuddering breath before plowing on   
"What did you do, stupid? Why are you laying on the ground out here in the middle of nowhere in your own puke did you take the can of power pup from the counter by the sink cause that one's way out of date and I've been meaning to throw it out are you ok can you walk we're gonna take you back to the diner what did you ev—"

"Poison!" Ghoul's tone was sharp, but he reigned it in almost instantly. "He can't hear you, man, he's already out again. Let's just get him back to the car, ok?" 

By now Kobra was standing behind them, scowling behind the sunglasses, lips pressed into a thin line. "I've got shoulders." He stepped around Poison and Ghoul, narrowly missing the regurgitated Power Pup.   
Ghoul grabbed Jet's ankles. Poison tried for the middle but the most he accomplished was keeping Jet's butt from dragging on the ground.

It was not a pleasant sight as Party kneeled contorted on the floor of the car while Jet lay across the backseat, long legs folded up by the window. Ghoul twisted around from the front seat to watch while Kobra drove.

Well, that was all fine. The not pleasant sight was Jet, whose skin was cold and clammy but who's forehead was burning up. At all of Poison's touching he opened his eyes and lifted his head up, squinting around the car. They offered him some water, and he took it with a shaky hand. He couldn't manage to get the lid off. When they gave it back to him he was prepared to down the whole thing.   
"Little sips, babe, liiitle sips." They chided quietly. He tried to concentrate on sitting up and drinking water, but his head hurt so bad he thought his eyes might pop out of his skull, and the dizzy, nauseous feeling made choking down any water hard. Instead he tried looking at their face. He saw the worry dripping off of it and had just enough time to think "oh dang, I caused that." before the swirling rocking in his head made him fall back. His head bumped the door on the way down.

-

Show Pony wound up staying in the diner after all, just in case Jet came back to an empty diner while they were out looking for him. Ze was startled when ze heard the car roll up, and then halfway between concerned and relieved when ze saw Jet star walking up to the door, assisted by Kobra and Poison.  
When the crew stumbled in the front door, all four of them trying to get through at once like the idiots they were, ze was about to launch into a barrage of questions about where zer boyfriend had been and what he’d been doing, but stopped when ze heard Party already talking a mile a minute and saw that Jet was a little green in the face and making no effort to answer anything.

He looked right past zem, unblinking at the far wall. He squeezed his eyes shut and grabbed at Kobra’s arm. “Hey uhh. Uh. fuck. M’gonna faint.”

“Ok, ok, let’s have you lie down.” Ze shooed Poison out of the way and helped Kobra try and prevent him from falling. Or really control the direction and speed of his fall. “Poison, would you care to bring over a chair for his feet? Yeah that’s good let’s get some blood back to your head. Do you want some juice?”

He hadn’t quite fainted- being on the floor was definitely a help. But he was still super nauseous and dizzy, mouth pressed into a thin line to try and keep his composure. Not that he had a whole lot, laying on the floor with his feet up on a chair with all his friends squatting around him.

Oh, yuck.  
His entire body is covered in cold sharp tingles and his tongue goes zappy while his ears buzz like someone took scissors to a power station.  
There we go. Now he fainted.

He’s in bed now. Poison hands him some water.   
Jet takes it. He's never been thirstier. Room temperature water has never tasted so good.

"Woah, woah, woah, don't chug it; you're gonna throw up again." Poison tried to tilt the end of the water bottle back down. Jet held firm.

Pony appeared from behind Poison’s head. Woah. Poison had a big head. “I don’t know if you know this, but you kinda fucked yourself up in a big way.”

“Yuh.”

“You got heat exhaustion; this is why no one goes outside at midday, much less sleeps out in the brunt of it. And you got food poisoning or some shit from that power pup. The problem isn’t that it was expired, it's that the seal was broken. So I don’t know if your fever’s from that or the heat. I want you to take some tylenol to bring it down, but I'm worried you’ll just barf it up again.”

He kept his eyes shut tight so he wouldn’t have to look at either of their faces. He didn’t really want to think about all the stupid things he had done either, or the weird visions that come when you’re out in the middle of the desert alone. He wondered if they were angry at him. Somebody was holding his hand, somebody else was running their hand up and down his chest. It would have felt good if his stomach didn’t hurt so bad. Everything hurt. Anything that wasn’t aching was cramping, and anything that wasn’t either of those felt cold and hot at the same time, all prickly and gross. He was prickly and gross on the inside too. Not looking forward to trying to explain why he left or what he had felt.

Ghoul and Kobra entered with a bag of ice from the Gas n Gulp. Cold compresses were put wherever they could cool the most blood in the least time. Armpits, neck, between the thighs. At first he tensed up at the cold but it felt so good not to be unbearably hot.

The group stood around in silence, but it wasn’t strained. They had their Jet back, with no life threatening injury or sighting of dracs to speak of. 

“Care to tell us what you were doing out there?” Said Kobra’s voice from somewhere above him.

“Fuck.” He grunted. “Will you take ‘I don't know’ for an answer?” He felt his stomach slosh and his mouth get all slimy. He had just enough time to lean over the side of the bed before he lost all the water he just drank.

"Yep. Told you." Said one of them.

His nose burned and his eyes watered. He wiped his face on the pillow. 

-

When he woke up Pony was snuggled up behind him, one arm draped over his side to hold his hand.   
It would have been nice, but he really reeeeallly had to take a shit. Food poisoning does that to ya. He scrambled out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom without falling over or puking. That was pretty good. But it was still rough. He was pretty dizzy and nauseous, and when he finished his business he thought about throwing up too just for good measure.

No, best flush first.

Since there was no electricity to run any pumps, the toilet was flushed by filling the tank from a bucket of rain water sitting on the floor.  
The water for washing was just slightly cleaner and sitting on the counter. This one had a spigot at the bottom, and it was almost like washing your hands for real, except you only ever put it at a drip for fear of wasting it.

After he washed his hands he looked at himself in the mirror.

His face was weird.

It was his face, but it was weird to think that he was a person with a body and a face that people recognized.  
In that way, it definitely wasn’t his face, cause he wasn’t a person and he didn’t have a face.  
The face was off putting. Way too pale for his usual complexion, dark circles and bags under his eyes, stubble growing in ‘cause he hadn’t bothered to shave in… whatever. Time is fake. There were some crusty spots on his face. Dried up snot and tears and puke and what have you.   
Yikes.

He sat down against the wall and thought real hard about whether he was going to puke or not.

He was under the impression that it would help, but all his recent experience told him there was absolutely nothing that would make his stomach stop hurting.  
Someone knocked at the door.

“Yeah.”

Pony opened it. Then looked down at him. “Did you fall or did you just sit down?”

“Sat down.”

“Do you want help back up?”

He shrugged one shoulder. What would he do if he got up anyway?

Ze squatted down next to him. Right in his face. Looking right in his eyes. He couldn’t hold their gaze. Just let his eyes drift out of focus and head thunk back against the wall.

“How about we get you cleaned up.” Ze got up and came back with a damp washcloth, pressing it into his hand.

He looked down at it. And his hand. He didn’t want to move. Not one finger. He could live with crud on his face for the rest of whatever. He wasn’t real anyway. This meat sack he was in was more of a statue and he was just looking out through it.

“You can wash your own face, goofus.”

“Yeah.”

But he couldn’t make himself move. A washcloth would feel bad anyway. Too rough and too wet.

Pony sighed and took the washcloth from him and dabbed at his face. He felt helpless and small and embarrassed, but he couldn’t make himself care either. Ze hauled him to his feet and guided him back to bed. He was about to flop down on his stomach when ze said “Stay sitting up ok you need to drink some water and not barf it all up this time.”

Ugh. 

So he sat himself down and sipped some water, careful not to gonk it all at once.

“Wanna try eating something?”

Would that really help? Well, its not like he could get any worse. He shrugged.

“Yes or no, hon.”

Ugh. He didn’t wanna make a decision.

“You are going to try one saltine.”

“‘Kay.”

He ate one saltine. It was the stalest thing he ever tasted. Hard chewy mush. Not that any of those adjectives made sense together.

He crawled under the covers and Pony crawled back in next to him. “I’m sorry you feel so yucky, babe.”

Ze ran zer hand up and down his chest and belly. He reached up his own hand to stop it and press the heel into his sternum, zer warm palm right over his heart. Held it like that. It was peaceful, but he wasn’t quite with it enough to really feel it inside of him.

“When you feel a little better would you tell us where you were trying to go or whatever it was you were doing so far out in the desert?”

Jet only breathed.

“It doesn’t have to be all of us. It doesn’t even have to be me. You just kinda scared us, is all. Pois was worried you got captured by scarecrows or somethin.”

“They’re always worried about that.”

“I’d say its a perfectly valid worry, don’t you think?”

“I mean. … yeah.”

In his head, he said everything he was thinking and explained with perfect eloquence the details of his desert excursion and and all the emotional mystery that caused it: the longing for a change of scenery, the visions of the misty forest and the cabin, the disgust with whatever the fuck this was they were doing out here in the desert, the need to know if there was somebody still alive out there, if someone survived the wars, the thought that if he could just keep walking he’d get somewhere, and the fear that the desert stretched endlessly in all directions and there was no escape from it.  
But all that came out was “sorry.”

“I know.”

-

A while later, Poison came in and stood in the door frame, watching the two of them. Without a word, they slunk into the room and climbed into bed on Jet’s other side. Propped up on one elbow, they traced a finger along his eyebrows, over and over, making little “shwoooooop. Ssshhhhhwooop” noises.

He wanted to smile at this but he mostly just stared unblinkingly at the ceiling.

Ghoul poked his head in. “Yo losers is this a makeout sesh or is it just a cuddle party?”

“I think it's just chill out and cuddle time, yeah.”

“Sweet i’m in.” He lay on top of both Poison and Jet. “No offense Pony, but i’m afraid if i touch you i’ll get glitter on me and never get it off.”

“Why’s that a bad thing though?” Ze fished in one pocket and waited for Ghoul to turn his head away toward Poison. When he did, glitter somehow magically got sprinkled in his hair and on the back of his shirt.

Kobra found them a while later. A small half smile crept up on his usually stoic face as he kicked off his shoes and joined the pile. He lay half on Jet and half on Pony, flinging his arm out to pull Ghoul into a side hug.

“This is gonna suck if I have to puke, guys.”

“So don’t puke on us.”

“Yeah we’re tryna share the love not get puked on.”

“That’s really not something I can control.”

“Too bad!”

He was crushed under the weight of all this love and burned with the warmth of it. Wait no. Those adjectives were too harsh. He was compressed and… lightly sauteed. 

His body was slightly less of a baked potato and his mind slightly less of a squashed pea.

Ghoul’s elbow dug into his ribs when he reached behind Poison to grab the sleeve of saltines. Crumbs fell down onto Jet’s shirt as Ghoul munched.  
Since they were all here, Jet thought he might try to explain himself.

There were a lot of false starts, where he wanted to begin but realized that each event was better explained by one previously. And when he finally got going in chronological order, his stomach twisted and everyone scrambled off the bed while he stuck his head out over the side, but nothing came up. When they were all settled again he did his best to explain, presenting each thing as a piece of evidence and trying to be thourough with the feelings with each one, trying to convince them he wasn’t just stupid and impulsive and got stuck in fantasy world or some shit. He wanted his case to be water tight.  
But it wasn’t a case and no matter how anxious he was about it, his friend’s weren’t there to judge him for it. That bit didn’t quite make it into his head, but it was so nonetheless. 

As an oration, it sucked and he knew it. He went rambling off on tangents about aliens and consciousness and past lives, stumbled through where he straight up forgot words or just didn’t have them to describe the thing in question, and stopped dead when he ran into walls of pain where his head throbbed and he had to wait for it to pass.

Not a single one of them asked questions. Just lay by him and listened silently.

He was in the middle of talking about how stupid he was and how sorry he was and how none of this was making any sense when Poison interruped him by grabbing his hand.

“Its ok if it doesn’t make any sense. Or really, it makes sense, but not in a logical way. In a feeling way it makes sense. Like if we were still city people, i’d be mad or wouldn’t understand, but like. As an entity, In the desert, I feel it.”

Kobra spoke up from where he was squshed between ghoul and the wall. “From a safety standpoint, you done fucked up. But i’ve sorta had a mind to go out there myself in the dead of the night.”

“Zero out of ten would not recommend.”

“That really doesn’t stop the feeling though.”

Pony tapped Jet’s head and Kobra’s shoulder. 

“You know i think Cherri gets that a lot. Or used to, anyway.”

“Oh wait.” Poison said.

“What?”

“Fuck, is this-“ they gestured at Jet. “is this all what he was talking about? He mentioned something like that and I got snippy with him.”

“I don’t know, bro, i wasn’t there.”

“No, yeah, I think that is what he meant—“ they put on their best cherri impression, leaning cooly back against the wall, world weary gaze fixed pensively into the middle distance. “Desert makes people do funny things sometimes.” They said in what was absolutely not Cherri’s voice.

“Why’z it do that though?” Kobra asked.

Party turned to him. “It doesn’t? I’ve never wanted to do that. Desert’ll fuckin kill you, man, i mean, look at Jet,—“

“I’m not dead, you fuckass.”

“Maybe not but you sure were actin like it. Like if your crew finds you on the ground under a bush half conscious and throwing up all over yourself you don’t get to say you got away unscathed.”

“I puked a good 5 feet away from where I lay down!”

“More like 3, but whatever.” Kobra said. “But the desert does fuck with your head and Party’s just a weirdo for not noticing. I do wanna see what’s beyond zone 7.”

“Yeah.” Said Ghoul from where he was snuggled in Kobra’s chest.

“If it’s just the same as what we’ve got going on here I think I'd cry, though.”

“Don’t you think you’ve done enough crying as it is?”

“What?”

“Don’t play dumb, you were definitely crying before we came and got you.”

“Oh.” He didn’t really remember that part.

Ghoul started to speak “Wait so if I wanna go explore beyond the zones, and Kobra wants to explore beyond the zones, and Jet wants to exp-“

“If I’m gay and you’re gay, who’s driving the spaceship?”

“Shut up, kobra!”

“No!”

“I’m driving the spaceship!”

“But you’re gay though.”

“Who’s on first?!”

Jet tried to bury his head deeper into the pillows. “Y’all are too damn loud.”

Ghoul slapped his hands on Kobra’s back as an improvised gavel. “Order in the court! Ok. All in favor of an extra-zonal exploration, say Aye.”

“Aye!” Said Jet, Kobra, and Ghoul together.

“Those against?”

Poison and Pony looked at eachother.

“I kinda have a job, guys.” Announced Pony.

“Nuh-uh, jobs are for chumps that’s the whole reason we’re not in the city right now!”

“It is like one fifth of the reason but go off I guess.”

“What’s D gonna do anyway, fire you? Its not like he’s gonna find anyone else.”

“Well that’s kinda the point- the Pony Express is my thing and no one else is gonna deliver messages in my times and at my rates. I’m kinda important to the revolution, y’know?”

At the word ‘revolution’, Jet felt sick. They were a minor inconvenience at best. Nothing they did mattered. He rolled over onto his side and curled into a ball, displacing all his friends. 

“You gonna hurl?”

“Stomach hurt again?”

“No,” he said.

The group waited for a response and when none came they went back to talking about leaving to have a look around the outer zones. How long it would take, how much food they would need, how much gas, how they would afford that much food and gas all at once, how far away zone 7 was, what direction they would go, whether or not Pony would come with, what they would do if they found the ocean.  
He listened but didn’t chime in. This was what he wanted, wasn’t it?


	8. ch-ch-ch-ch-changes (turn and face the strange) ch-ch-changes

It was everything he wanted.

But hold up. We’re not there yet.

It started out pretty tame, or at least, as tame as life in the zones can get. And about as well planned as things in the zones can get too.

The beautiful thing about living in the zones was that if you decided to do something, you just did it. You didn’t worry about the legal or social repercussions of the city. People lived as the spirit moved them, and operated mostly on whim. This made people a little flaky and inconsistent, but you make time for what’s important to you, and to a lot of killjoys, helping others was the most important.

That being said, the gang up and decided to ditch the desert, leave this sweaty sandy hellhole in the dust.

It was a little rough, trying to scrounge up food and gas for the journey. They didn’t know how long it would be, or if they would be back, or what they would find wherever it was they were going.

The gang was generally ok with the level of change that was happening- Ghoul was raring to go for a new adventure, Kobra’s usual stony face was crossed by a little half smile at the thought of exploring someplace new whenever they were talking logistics or fantasizing about what they might find out there, with some level of respect to Jet’s… dreams? Visions? He didn’t talk about them very much unless pressed. It was kind of hard to think about.

Poison was having less of a good time. They got it into their head that for such a journey into unknown territory for an unspecified amount of time, they would need a bigger vehicle. Fitting 4 people in the trans-am fucking sucked, and they had been pondering this for a while. That thing was small and good for zipping around on 2 person missions, but having 5 crew members with all their gear over miles and miles where there might not even be roads… well that was a bad idea for a little sports car.

The thing was, they were very attached to this little sports car, and the amount of love it got from them was evident- splashes of color, slogans, and stickers all adorned the sides. Had this been the city, it would have no resale value. Geez. Imagine trying to keep impersonal about something you liked just so you could sell it later. Imagine withholding art for the sake of money. That was another thing they hated about the city- the off-white and neutral walls of all the apartments, the boring squares of lawns in front of the houses. Even if you owned something, it was never really yours. It belonged to whoever would buy it next. Best not paint the walls watermelon pink, best not plant ivy out front, lest you lower property value. 

Always buying, never owning. So many subscription services in the city too. Pay every month to get a thing, but you never get to have that thing for keeps. Keep paying and paying and it's still never yours to treat as something you own.

This car, they owned it. It was unmistakably theirs. Shittycarmods had NOTHING on them. They did whatever the fuck they wanted with it. The paint job was shitty and done in acrylics barely holding on to the real paint after being sandblasted. The whole thing was an expression of joy. They loved it.

Going over dunes was definitely going to wear out the clutch.

They thought of the times the engine had overheated and they didn’t have coolant on hand, how someone always had to sacrifice drinking water so they could get home safe and fix it properly.

Going north would be good.

Go someplace cooler.

It was an iconic car. Could probably go for a lot of money in the zones. Mad gear had sneezed in there once. That could be a selling point for somebody.

But ew, money.

BL/ind would love to have it too. Having a car that belonged to 4 wanted killjoys would be great for the industry’s image.

Now that made them sick, the thought of BL parading their precious car around like a trophy or proof the fab 4 had been taken down a notch.  
Whatever. They’d sell it. They’d sell it at auction at the next market day, and it would go to the highest bidder. No it wouldn’t. If the highest bidder seemed like an asshole, it would go to the person who seemed like they needed it the most. Yeah. Morals over money. Livin the dream.

And they’d use the money to buy a pickup truck. 4 door, big bed. Maybe they could all sleep in the bed of the pickup, like that one time there was a bad storm and they all slept on one bed in the storage closet. They could decorate the truck with stuff they found on their new adventures…  
Bruh.  
Things were gonna change, huh.

All this right now was gonna be a memory, and the car wasn’t even coming with as a relic of an old life.They were all gonna be different people.  
Well. Everything in the past was memories and they became different people every day, right? Little by little? But it seemed more manageable like that when the setting stayed the same while life changed.  
They sighed.

-

At long last, the trans am was sold, a truck was bought, and it was subsequently filled with extra gas cans, crates of food, everybody’s worldly possessions (within reason. Pony couldn’t take zer whole cd collection and was more than a little miffed ze could only take 1 pair of roller skates), and the bodies of 5 dusty sweaty killjoys.

It was slightly uncomfortable now, nobody leading, nobody knowing where to go and what the dangers might be.

“So what if the radiation belt is real?”

“Then we get radiation poisoning and die, duh.”

“What if it’s real but it's not that strong?”

“Then we get cancer and die like 30 years from now.”

“What if the desert doesn’t end? Like what if the entire world is fucked and laid waste to?”

“Can’t be. How would BL/ind grow their food? Or build anything made of wood?”

“Well its mostly concrete and stucco, aint it?”

“Yuh but still. Even for the stuff that’s lab synthesized, the raw materials gotta come from somewhere, yeah?”

“This makes my brain hurt. How do we not know these things?”

“My job is to be dumb and gorgeous, baby, I don’t have to know anything. It's what the fellas back home would call ‘Big Thembo Energy’.”

“We’re the fellas. We call you that. And this is home now.”

“What, the truck?”

“Yuh.”

They traveled like that, straight West, through bombed-out ghost towns and great stretches of desert. Even this far removed from anything, the glow from Battery City at night still shone off on the northeastern horizon, just beyond the curve of the earth.

When the road wouldn’t go west anymore, they went north. Out the drivers side window there was another great expanse of desert, but this one had no cacti or sandblasted signs or any roads that they could see. Just miles and miles of grey-brown. The desert usually felt natural to them. It was hostile and hard to live in, sure, but it was supposed to be there. It was its own entity doing its own thing. But this, off to the left, the great flatness, felt somehow wrong, like something ought to be there but it wasn’t.  
Everyone tried to comment on it. Everyone else could only say “huh.”

It took days to get out of the desert. Or it felt like days. Or maybe a week? There was a long time where there was no sign of it ending, when they all thought of turning back, that the desert would stretch on forever and they would run out of gas and food and be stranded in the middle of an infinite desert.

“I was looking at one of Dr D’s maps back home,” Pony said into the silence. Well not quite silent. Devoid of all sound but road noise. “And like. The desert should not be this big. The zones that surround Batt City are like… 17 miles radius? At this speed we shoulda been out of here within 20 minutes.”

“Well the maps were wrong; this place is a fucken pocket dimension.” grumbled Poison. It was the best explanation anyone could come up with.

Slowly, the landscape became more hilly. It was still brown with specks of green, but these little rounded hills were covered in dry dead grass. Once, when they stopped to stretch their legs, Ghoul rolled down one. When he got back in the car he was picking little bits of it off himself and complaining about being itchy. The green stuff was closely and joyfuly inspected. It was prickly, but not spiny like cacti. It was little folded over leaves, each one branching out of the other, making a scaly pattern, dusted with something silver that rubbed off on your fingers. It had tough little green berries. 

“Smells like gin.” noted jet.

“Oh yuck gin makes me barf.” said Pony

“Yeah, dumbass, enough of anything’ll make anyone barf!” said Poison

“Yeah, but, just a sip. Just a sip of it and I feel bleaughbblbeeeghgyeeulalblblbppt” Ze made a wet barfing noise.

The rolling dry hills gave way to boring flatness again, then back to hills, this with more green scrub, and from then the green just kept increasing.

They sped northbound on what used to be I-5. Or sped when they could, but nobody had driven on or repaired this road ever since BL/Ind came to power and closed the borders. Cracks, potholes, sand and dirt blown over the roadway, lanes crumbled or washed away from flooding or liquefaction. When trees became more frequent, they littered the pavement with fallen branches and logs.  
Now, instead of distant hills covered in dry grass, they were right up next to em and they were covered in trees, but there was so much more than trees. Moss growing on the trunks, lichen hanging from the branches, grasses and shrubs in the shade beneath.

So they did make a new life in the forest, away from BL/ind breathing down their necks. And they did all sleep in the bed of the pickup truck, and explore all the unknown geographical features, and swim in the ocean, and find a smattering of people who had been living there since before BL/ind had come to power. And they learned how to grow their own food, and there was enough water to drink. But those details are unimportant. The important thing was that, at long last, perhaps for the first time in his life, Jet Star was content.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oof I started writing this last summer n then school got in the way. Its done now though. I've said all I have to say on the matter, but if someone wanted to expand on it that'd be extremely cool.

**Author's Note:**

> I started with this idea a reeeeal long time ago and it didn't go where I thought it would, so sorry if that kiss scene is a little out of place. I kept it in cause I'm gay and lonely.
> 
> I have like 14k written on this and decided to start posting bits of it to motivate myself to finish. I don't know if that's going to work like I hope it does. The thing it, I don't know how I want it to finish. I wrote the scene that was stuck in my mind, and then a whole bunch of stuff in the middle, but I can't just leave it at that cause it'd be a suuuper unsatisfying ending. But that's a long time from now. I was also hoping that having people reading it would give me ideas for what I wanna do. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.


End file.
